[In the following essay, Kushigian traces connections between the detective stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges, and concludes that the two writers share a unique perception of the world.]

Jorge Luis Borges has remarked that writers create their precursors. This statement suggests that the precursor's text should be read and understood in a unique manner, whereupon a reading of the precursor's text is viewed in the light of the author's (in this situation, Borges') more recent text. Borges has in a sense inverted the downward movement of influence from precursor to author. In this manner he aligns himself to the theory of literature expressed by T. S. Eliot in his article, «Tradition and the Individual Talent». Briefly stated, the history suggests that new poets should be compared and contrasted with all poets, both living and dead, and that the existing order of literature should then be readjusted to make a place for the new poet (reinforcing conformity between the old and the new). In this fashion the past is altered by the present as much as the present is altered by the past. To this scheme we may suggest the author Borges, who assumes his place among many great literary figures such as Kafka, Cervantes and Poe, to name only a few who have influenced him and are influenced by him with respect to the reading of their works. This study then will focus specifically on two detective stories. «The Purloined Letter» of Edgar Allan Poe and «Death and the Compass» by Jorge Luis Borges. I will attempt to show how the text of Borges can be submitted to a ‘Poe’-etic reading, and more significantly, how the text of Poe can be read, rewritten and submitted to a Borgesian interpretation.

Following what some believe to be the more logical sequence of influence from the precursor to the author, we discover that in the case of parody what the parodist wishes to change or eliminate from the precursor's work is an important as the material he chooses to retain. As the parodist attempts to improve upon the original, what is distorted and what is missing (or the silences in the text) focus our attention on that which the parodist would persuade us are the superior elements of the original. This literary influence is very skillfully explained by Harold Bloom in his book The Anxiety of Influence. Although he writes specifically of poetic influence, I believe his theory can be generalized to the influence of any writer on another, crossing all barriers of genre. Mr. Bloom writes,

«Poetic influence—when it involves two strong, authentic poets,—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. The history of fruitful poetic influence … is a history of anxiety and self-saving caricature, of distortion, of perverse, willful revisionism without which modern poetry as such could not exist.»¹

This ‘creative correction’ of the precursor by the ephebe (beginning poet, as Mr. Bloom refers to him) in no manner implies a negative connotation. Both Borges and the critic, Bloom, undermine the notion that the writer of the new generation is an improved version of the precursor by virtue of his place in history and the influence of all writers who have gone before him. Borges himself, while employing the term precursor, is explicit about avoiding the negative connotation of one who has failed in his endeavor but who has paved the way for others. Borges is most persuasive in his prologue to the Bioy Casares novel, The Invention of Morel, when he states, «I believe I am free from every superstition of modernity, of any illusion that yesterday differs intimately from today or will differ from tomorrow …»² The precursor and the ephebe will meet on similar grounds and the confrontation will not end until revisions, that perhaps extend to both sides, are secured.

The detective story or murder mystery is a genre invented by Edgar Allan Poe that borders on the fantastic. The writers of the detective story adhere to strict limitations imposed upon them by its originator, although Borges may bend the limitations slightly. A detective story must be developed in such a manner that there are many tempting and possible solutions placed before the reader which are eventually proven false, and a highly improbable solution revealed at the conclusion which is proven correct. It is the uncertainty of these elements in the structure or in the development of the action that heightens the ‘secret plot’ of the narrative. Upon examining «The Purloined Letter», we see that the many possible solutions are introduced by the Prefect. He has entered the Minister's apartment to search for the letter, and has exhausted all space by counting pages in books, probing needles in chairs, and looking into mirrors, but does not find the letter. Jacques Lacan states, in a seminar on «The Purloined Letter» that the letter is a signifier which becomes a symbol of an absence, its own absence. The Prefect's frustration reminds us of the gravity of the matter as long as the letter remains absent from the rightful place. The improbable solution, which later proves to be correct, is provided in the end by Dupin.

The plot is another structural feature of the detective story that must comply with the strict rules of the genre. As the detective story borders on the fantastic, we might apply the illuminating story of Emir Rodríguez-Monegal which suggests the application of the fantastic as a metaphor for reality. In reference to Borges and his theory of the fantastic Rodríguez-Monegal states,

«For him, nevertheless, fantastic literature employs fictions not to evade reality but to express a deeper and more complex view of reality. All of that literature is directed more towards offering metaphors of reality—through which the author wishes to transcend the superficial or pedestrian observations of realism—than to escape to gratuitous ground. It follows that not just any irresponsible fiction may suffice; it follows that fantastic literature should require more lucidity and rigour, a more authentic demand on the style than a mere copy of everyday reality, which may indeed abound in incoherences, in arbitrariness, in tedium …»³

The rigorousness of style demanded in fantastic literature and in the detective story genre lead to an effect produced by the compilation of its precise and distinct elements. For example, the design of the various elements of suspense and incrimination lead the reader to the startling effect that in reality the letter was not hidden, but rather purloined. We are given fair warning (in the title and in the story itself) that deceit is in the letter and the letter should be the solution to the deceit, but we are more readily seduced by arbitrary appearances, the Prefect's solutions and the actual telling of the story. The importance of the organization and confrontation of elements in the fantastic is underlined by Irène Bessière in The Fantastic Narrative. To quote Bessière,

«The fantastic narrative employs sociocultural frameworks and forms of understanding which define the domains of the natural and the supernatural, of the banal and the strange, not to conclude with some metaphysical certitude but to organize the confrontation of the elements of a civilization relating to the phenomenon which escapes the economy of the real and the surreal, whose conception varies according to the epoch.»⁴

This organization will lead to a creation of the ‘other world’, fabricated with images and devices of this world that pretend versimilitude. Specifically, Poe will create his ‘other world’ through elements of social customs in nineteenth century France that shift inexplicably between the real and surreal. Borges moves even further in his use of the strange and the surreal to express a culture and a society in Buenos Aires that could represent, in its very description, any large European city. It is a far more demanding area of literature, and Poe and Borges experiment in it quite skillfully.

To continue the study of the plot in terms of its structural features, we realize that, in reference to «The Purloined Letter», the solution has been obtained when the story is explained to us. The story is explained by a third party who merely retells the story as a sparse account of fact, because the narrator, a disciple of Dupin, is not in a position to know the Queen or the Minister. The narrator, speaking in the first person singular, quickly gains our confidence. This story resembles many other Poe stories in that we identify with the narrator to the point that his speech is never subject to the rest of the truth. The Prefect is consequently very easily duped into accepting the narrator's conclusion that the letter is not on the premises. The narrator plays to the Prefect's weakness, which is the fact that he sees but does not understand the mystery. He presents the Prefect with a possible solution that the Prefect would be delighted to accept. To this solution the Prefect replies with false modesty, «I am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the letter is not at the Hôtel.» (p. 447). In time, as this possible solution is proven false, we are set back on the track by Dupin, whose advice is to continue searching the hôtel. The second major scene, when recounted to us by the narrator, is merely a repetition of the first scene. The letter is again purloined by a man whose intellect equals that of the Minister, that is to say, by Dupin. The improbable solution is discovered and remedied by Dupin. As the forces of good win out over the forces of evil in the detective story, Poe presents us with a purloiner who is defeated and a detective who wins.

In the article «The Narrative Art and Magic», Borges examines the method of the narrative employing two novels, The Life and Death of Jason by William Morris and The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym by Poe, to illustrate his theory. Upon examining one aspect of the novel of Poe, Borges states,

«One induces rightly from the preceding statements that the central problem of the novel is causality. One of the varieties of the genre, the slow-developing novel of characters, feigns or orders a concatenation of motives that propose not to differ from those of the real world. Its occurence, nevertheless, is not common. In the novel of continuous vicissitudes, that motivation is uncalled for, the same as in the narrative of a few pages …»⁵

The fantastic is a text of what should be, or the world as intended by the author. It reflects the disorder of the real world, and simultaneously expresses natural order as magical or marvelous. Borges clarifies this magical impresion when he states, «… magic is the crowning or nightmare of causality, not its contradiction. The miracle is not less foreign in that universe than in that of the astronomers. All of the laws of nature govern it, along with other imaginary ones.»⁶ When we accept this we can move from the marvelous to the fantastic in literature because, according to Irène Bessière, in the marvelous values are absolute and norms are exposed but never questioned. However, in the fantastic every event is a unique case and norms are revealed, questioned and considered thoroughly. We might consider therefore another interpretation of «The Purloined Letter» that would have us see the magic, and that would be through a Borgesian interpretation. «The Purloined Letter» may be viewed through some of the lifelong interests entertained by Borges: geometrical logic, infinity, perpetural forms, mirrors and the paradoxes of Zeno. The elements maintain their form but the emphasis on their diversity, in addition to their intersubjectivity, present Poe in a new light.

Bruno's concern for triads, quaternities and absolute space is an inspiration to Borges in «Death and the Compass», and provides the impetus for the introduction in the detective story of his (Bruno's) theory of the reduction of the many to one. As precisely as these geometric theories of triads, quaternities and the reduction of the many to one are projected onto the narrative of Borges, so may they be projected onto «The Purloined Letter» of Poe. It can be said that Jacques Lacan proves this ‘theory’, although perhaps inadvertently, in his seminar on «The Purloined Letter». Lacan speaks of the numbers three and four in terms of glances or logical moments. Each glance will be displaced by another and all of the background maneuvers to disguise will have no effect on the glance, which has the letter as its focus. According to Lacan, «Thus three moments, structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each time by different characters.»⁷ The glances are interdependent as shall be made evident upon examination of each glance.

The first glance, according to Lacan, is one that sees nothing. This would first be the glance of the King in the ‘primal scene’ (the term employed by Lacan) which takes place in the royal boudoir. Unaware of the Queen's embarrassment when he enters the room, the King sees neither her distress nor the letter. Included in the first glance are the police, who in the second scene (a repetition of the ‘primal scene’) also see nothing. This scene takes place in the apartment of the Minister, and the glance is the search for the letter which they do not find. The second glance is a glance which sees that the first (King or police) sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides. This glance displaces the first glance, as the Queen in the primal scene and the Minister in the second scene deceive themselves into believing that no one has noticed where the letter is located. The third glance belongs to the Minister in the primal scene and Dupin in the second scene. It displaces the second glance by seeing that the first two glances leave that which should be hidden exposed to whomever would seize it. The Minister, upon entering the royal boudoir, deduces that the King knows nothing of the letter, and that the Queen complacently has assured herself that if the King has not removed the letter, then no one else would dare. The Minister turns this to his advantage by seizing the letter. The second scene is again identical to the primal scene. Dupin enters the Minister's apartment when the Minister is at home and craftily spies the letter left for him after the police were incapable of discovering its location. The Minister, like the Queen, is lulled into the belief that no one could remove the letter from its place.

It is at this time that we truly grasp the meaning of the verb ‘to purloin’. To purloin, according to the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word which means to put aside, to put amiss. We are dealing with a letter which is not lost, destroyed or hidden, but rather diverted, or etymologically speaking, one whose course had been prolonged. Bearing in mind the social customs of the time, the letter was in the correct location in the room but found in the wrong hands. Therefore, it can be said that its course simply was prolonged before the letter was returned to its rightful owner. The purloiner has become more and more like the image of the woman who surrendered the letter to him—the Queen. The Minister also will surrender the letter, powerless to stop its capture, through misuse of the object he prized so dearly.

The three glances, each having as its focus the invaluable letter, would appear to form a triangle with each point dependent on the other. This triadic structure seems to be finite as it includes all of the characters of the story (except the narrator who is reduced to retelling the story) in different combinations. To make this pattern complete and unified, we add another point or glance, which changes the figure from the triangle to rhombus or from three points to four. This passage from three to four is often alluded to in the Aion of Jung. I would like to add a possible fourth glance to the present triangle by including the glance that sees itself not being seen. This is mentioned in the Lacan article under another guise, but I feel it exists in the story to unify all points, because it comes to represent the absence of the letter from its place. This glance belongs to the Minister in the primal scene who sees himself not being seen by the King, who, in effect, is the only person who could stop him from removing the letter. In the second scene the glance belongs to Dupin, who also sees himself not being seen or suspected (this time by the Minister). Dupin has deceived the Minister by wearing dark glasses, (which hide the movement of his eyes) and by arranging for a disturbance in the street (which will call the Minister to the window out of curiosity). The fourth point could bring the downfall of the Minister. He has caused the absence or the prolongation of the course of the letter, and then by not using it to his advantage, loses possession of the letter. His only recourse was to keep the letter with the knowledge that the Queen understood he would use it against her. The fourth point through the Minister's glance has advanced an infinite number of possibilities for the prolongation of the course of the letter, thereby prolonging the power over the Queen. But in the final analysis, through Dupin's glance, the four points are reduced to one and the letter is nullified by the fact that it is returned to its rightful owner. What the Minister neglected to realize was that the letter whose course has been prolonged will, according to Lacan, always arrive at its destination.

«Death and the Compass» by Jorge Luis Borges can also be submitted to an analysis of its structural features which would classify it in the genre of the detective story. The stylistic devices are like those of Poe: the presentation of logical solutions which are proven false and an improbable solution which is proven correct, the design that every element of the plot should contribute to the final effect, and a linear structure of time. I quote Poe on the subject of the tale,

«A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. He has not fashioned his thoughts to accomodate his incidents, but having deliberately conceived a certain single effect to be wrought, he then invents such incidents, he then combines such events, and discusses them in such tone as may best serve him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very first sentence tend not to be the outbringing of this effect, then in his very first step has he committed a blunder. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale, its thesis, has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed—an end absolutely demanded, yet, in the novel, altogether unattainable.»⁸

It would appear as if Borges had responded directly to this definition of the tale, contributing to the effect from the very first sentence to the selection of words written. Borges does not commit a blunder, as his first sentence, «Of the many problems which exercised the reckless discernment of Lönnrot, none was so strange—so rigorously strange, shall we say—as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti.» (p. 129)⁹, almost achieves the entire ‘effect’ in itself. The detective story genre is, we may say, Poe's legacy to Borges, but in the final analysis I believe Poe would be incredulous of the inheritance. Borges is both a product and a transformation of that very same system. «Death and the Compass» exemplifies (at least superficially) the linear construction of a detective story, and its title is even reminiscent of those tales of Edgar Allan Poe. The theory that a solution must be interesting, the tetragrammaton, the search for the name of God, the Hasidic Sect, red and yellow diamond shapes, cryptic sentences, Carnival, harlequin suits, underlined passages, hand-written annotations, a plan of the city, three dates and the inference of threes and fours, are all elements which combine to form certain possible solutions for Lönnrot (which in the end are proven false). The highly improbable solution is proven correct, to the dire fortune of Lönnrot. Every element, almost every noun employed by Borges, contributes to the final solution, but it is such an astonishing piece that all the clues substantiate Lönnrot's theory on the one hand, and invent a theory for Scharlach on the other. Borges has placed Lönnrot in the ever-present labyrinth. Poe allows his detective to win and survive as a heroic figure. Borges appears to think that the detective is too clever, as witnessed by the line referring to Lönnrot, «The mystery seemed almost crystalline to him now; he was mortified to have dedicated a hundred days to it.» (p. 136).¹⁰ But Lönnrot is ‘a kind of Auguste Dupin’, as Borges tells us, so he will win to some extent in the end when he rebuffs Scharlach for his excessive use of lines in his labyrinth. He has Scharlach promise to use another labryrinth (one in which Lönnrot knows he could not be caught), the next time Scharlach kills him. Borges has willfully revised Poe's concept of a detective-hero, and has misread the purpose of many clues, thereby parodying or inverting Poe's scheme of the detective story.

The linear structure of time which allows an indentification of the elements step by step, is emphasized in the genre of the detective story. Borges applies this structure and produces an even greater effect in «Death and the Compass» than did Poe in «The Purloined Letter». In «Death and the Compass» there is uniformity of time. We note that the murders take place exactly a month apart (December third, January third, and February third), and that the number three is a constant. Each murder is displaced by the next in bizarre details and in time, providing Lönnrot with a clue to the inevitability of the final murder. The story must also be read following the outline of murders presented (Yarmolinsky, Azevedo, Gryphius), so that sense is made of the clues left at the scene of the crime and of the importance of the number three in the first two murders and four in the supposed murder of Gryphius. To change the order would make Scharlach's clues for Lönnrot unintelligible.

As previously stated, Borges does misread Poe and distort the goal of winning into proof of a mathematical theorem. He exceeds the limits of an interpretation of his story through a misreading of Poe, and inverts it through a Borgesian interpretation of his particular interests, and inverts it once more so that the reader may rewrite the story as he chooses. This final inversion is probably most successful in the detective story, as the author enjoins the reader to discover the theme, the purpose, the ending and himself in the story. This may be unsettling for the reader who demands the codification of what is or is not permissible in a detective story, as provided by Poe and the British school of mystery writers. Borges understands this anxiety in the reader but does not grant him sympathy. Borges speaks to this anxiety in his article, «Partial Enchantments of the Quixote»,

«Why does it disquiet us to know that Don Quixote is a reader of the Quixote, and Hamlet is a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the answer: those inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious.»¹¹

Borges expects the reader to rise to the occasion and rewrite the story to his own liking. This is what distinguished Borges' detective story from the genre of detective stories, in that it can and should always be reread.

The possibility for an infinite reorganization of imaginary elements forms the basis for the Borges' short story. These imaginary elements, or the unusual, stem not from the supernatural but from reality, albeit a variable and fickle reality. Bessière refers to this duplicity in Borges' perception of reality, and discloses an interpretation of the fantastic (as examined through one of Borges' theories on literature) when she states.

«The unusual does not correspond in his [Borges'] short stories, to the description of a process of derealization, but rather to the revelation of the organization and the disorganization of appearances.

These first fruits make the fantastic narrative the most lucid and the least arbitrary of all literary narrative. The flaw of the realist novel is in rediscovering the initial disorder by virtue of reducing itself to the demonstration of causality, and on never giving the design of balance … Inversely, the fantastic text, far from using causality as a method of mimesis, as a means of assuring the similitude of the logic of the argument and that of the real world, must develop the principle of causality in all its consequences, must establish the ‘nightmare of causality, not its contradiction.’»¹²

Borges' organization of reality may evolve from a manipulation of interests he has sustained since childhood, such as logic, mathematical theorems, and the sense of infinity. Jaime Alazraki states that Borges reduces philosophical and theological ideas to mere creations of the imagination. In «Death and the Compass» he uses the theories of Bruno, Jung, the Hermetic science and the paradoxes of Zeno to establish his plot. At the scene of the first crime, the mathematical theories begin to unfold. Clues are given to suggest the number three and the deceptive importance of the number four. Yarmolinsky, victim of the first killing, was a delegate to the Third Talmudic Congress. He had survived three years of war in the Carpathians and three thousand years of oppression. He arrived in the Hôtel du Nord on the third of December and was called at three minutes past eleven on the following day. The inspector on the case was Treviranus, whose very name suggests the number three. The inspector's statements also contribute to the effect when he says, «There's no need to look for a Chimera, or a cat with three legs,» (p. 130), an expression which he uses to emphasize what he believes to be a logical conclusion to the murder. The deceptive overstating of the importance of the number three entices at least one overanxious detective, if not every reader of the mystery. Within the same scene we find intimations of the number four in the same Tetrach, the call on the fourth of December and the Tetragrammaton. Attention is drawn to the number four by the lack of emphasis Borges has placed on it in comparison with the number three. Three is later repeated in the fact that an interview with Lönnrot was published in three columns before the second murder occurs.

The second crime takes place on the third of January. The number clues become more scarce, as we are reminded of the number four through the diamond shapes on the walls of the shop. The victims are of exotic origins: a Rabbi from Podolsk and a thief who would appear to be Latin American by the poncho he is wearing, and by his supposedly romantic notion that real men wield only knives. The ‘effect’ is being reinforced constantly through these characters and incidents.

The third crime takes place on the third of February. Three men are involved: two short men wearing harlequin suits and the supposed victim, Gryphius. Three clues have been left in total at the murder scenes that claim the importance of the name of God. The thirty-third chapter of the Philologus is found and underlined in Gryphius' room. If by chance we are deceived by the images, a woman explains to us that the costumes the short men were wearing were of red, green and yellow lozenges—repetition of the figure of four points. The quote from the Philologus explains that Jews understand the passage of the day to be from sundown to sundown, so that the deaths must have occured on the fourth of every month. Lönnrot and Treviranus leave the scene of the crime at four o'clock. The author of the crimes has provided Lönnrot with symmetry in time and space, and entices him to move from the finite figure of the equilateral triangle (which represents the three supposed crimes) to the infinite figure of the rhombus (which includes the fourth crime). Lönnrot guesses «the secret morphology of the vicious series» but is powerless to prevent the completion of the last crime.

In his essay «Borges and Bruno: the geometry of infinity in ‘La Muerte y la Brújula’ [‘Death and the Compass’]», Robert C. Carroll proposes that Borges structures his story on concepts of infinity and finitude, the principle of three becoming four and the reduction of the may to one. With the examples presented of three displaced by four, Carroll reinforces the notion of the triadic structure converted to a quaternity. The triangle is flipped over on its base and a rhombus is formed, but the triangle is not lost, it is merely contained within the rhombus. To enhance the figure, the rhombus could also be conceived of as the result of the reflection of the triangle in a mirror:

Then within the unity of the rhombus, new triangles could be inscribed ad infinitum upon the mutual base. That is to say, new theories could be continuously drawn from the same story, which is, I believe as Borges would have it.

Carroll writes in his article of the challenge Bruno offers to the quality of a person's intellect. Bruno distinguishes the superior intellect from the inferior intellect according to the ability of the former to reduce the many to one. Carroll states, «Borges accomplishes this reduction … through Lönnrot, who after entrapping himself by means of brilliance and deductive logic, reduces Scharlach's scheme to the single, simple all-inclusive line.»¹⁴ Lönnrot wins at the speculative level, because he is more clever than Scharlach in devising a labyrinth without superfluos points. He intends to become the victor the next time his death is plotted, by reducing the four lines to one line with four points. While Scharlach is able to lure Lönnrot to his death in the quaternary structure, he will catch Lönnrot in his new labyrinth which is also influenced by the paradoxes of Zeno. It is futile for him to hate or lash out at Scharlach in the mansion of Triste-le-Roy (which itself is a labyrinth and another symbol of the three), because somewhere in the future he will move towards another labyrinth in which he will win. In this manner Lönnrot will be protected by the labyrinth, and will be as victorious as Dupin in «The Purloined Letter».

The final inversion, that is to say, the personal observations, would suggest a variety of interpretations. I would like to suggest a few which no doubt will change as I read and reread Borges. In the labyrinth everything is reflected as if it were a mirrored image. Lönnrot and Scharlach may be one as both names in German mean read. They would appear to be doubles so that when Scharlach kills Lönnrot, he is really looking into the mirror and killing himself. There is an obsession of being two, reinforced with the need to destroy the two and remain one. They are brothers because they are linked by the meaning of their names and by the possibility of joining their names in German—‘Scharlachrot’ (which means scarlet, another shade of red). Finally, I would like to suggest the definition from the Wildhagen German-English dictionary. ‘Scharlach’ is a masculine noun meaning scarlet fever, and ‘lonn’ a masculine noun meaning return, reward, compensation. The name Scharlach would suggest to me a bitter statement by Borges of the triumph of illness over man, as he foresaw that the blindness that had struck his father would eventually overtake him. It could also be an ironic statement of the unfortunate triumph of cunning over the intellect in this world. The word ‘lonn’ might suggest a reward in another labyrinth, in another world, under a different set of rules.

To conclude, I would like to reiterate the points of mutual influence between Edgar Allan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges. Either story undoubtedly may be read following the guidelines or limitations of the genre imposed by Poe and the British school of mystery writers. The many possible solutions, the improbable solution, the rigorous structure of the plot, the design that every element of the plot should contribute to the final effect, and the linear structure of time are points of departure that would enlighten the reading of either story. In this fashion we could interpret Borges according to Poe's theories of literature. Fortunately, for the sake of renewal and magic, the reverse holds true in the sense that we may interpret Poe according to Borges' interests in logic, mathematical theorems, infinity and his theories of literature. I would close with a statement Harold Bloom makes in his book The Anxiety of Influence, which he believes to be «more drastic and (presumably) more absurd,» than the statement Borges makes about artists creating their precursors. I present this statement as an excellent summation of the phenomenon suggested by Borges of artists and their precursors. Bloom says of these artists,

«For all of them achieve a style that captures and oddly retains priority over their precursors, so that the tyranny of time almost is overturned, and one can believe, for startled moments, that they are being imitated by their ancestors.»¹⁵

Bloom further explains this as,

«… the triumph of having so stationed the precursor, in one's own work, that particular passages in his work seem to be not presages of one's own achievement, and even (necessarily) to be lessened by one's greater splendor.»¹⁶

Drastic but credible—Poe may very likely be indebted to Borges' achievements in the detective story genre.

Notes

1. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 30.

2. Jorge Luis Borges, «Prologue», in The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), p. 6.

3. Emir Rodriguez-Monegal, «Una teoria de la literatura fantástica,» Revista Iberoamericana, No. 42 (1976), p. 188. (my translation).

4. Irère, Bessière, Le récit fantastique (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1974), p. 11. (my translation).

5. Jorge Luis Borges, «El arte narrativo y la magia,» in Discusión, (Buenos Aires: Emece, 1972), p. 88. (my translation).

6. Borges, p. 89.

7. Jacques Lacan, «Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’,» Yale French Studies, No. 48, French Freud, (1973), p. 44.

8. Edgar Allan Poe, «The Short Story» in The Portable Poe, (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 566.

9. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths; Selected Stories and Other Writings, trans. Donald A. Yates (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 76.

10. Borges, Labyrinths, pp. 82-83.

11. Jorge Luis Borges, «Partial Enchantments of the Quixote» in Other Inquisitions, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 46.

12. Bessière, p. 153.

13. This concept was suggested to me by Emir Rodriguez-Monegal, whose guidance on this study has been invaluable.

14. Carroll, Robert C. «Borges and Bruno: the geometry of infinity in ‘La Muerte y la Brújula’ [‘Death and the Compass’]» MLN Hispanic Issue, Vol. 94, No. 2 (1979), p. 328.

15. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, p. 141.

16. Bloom, p. 141.